Year One

On August 24 we had our first year anniversary in Brisbane.  The first year here has absolutely flown by!  We have had so many fantastic experiences since coming here: starting new jobs (September 6 is the first anniversary at work), exploring a new city, seeing the coastal areas and swimming in the ocean, experiencing tropical heat and humidity, getting used to all the weird bugs and making it through the "flood of the century".  We still have so much to see and do in Australia, we feel like we haven't even scratched the surface of what there is to see and do here.  Oddly enough, this also marks the first time in a long time that we have spend an entire year in the same country!  We forget how easy it is to travel to Europe and the US from Canada.

To celebrate our first year, we went back to the same restaurant that we ate at on our first night here.  A year ago we were struggling to stay awake so we walked to Eagle St Pier, which seemed SO far away from where we were staying, and ate at a nice Italian restaurant (Il Centro).  Now we realize how close Eagle St Pier is to everything, and that we really didn't walk very far to get there.  What a difference a year, and not being jet-lagged, makes!

First year photo!

We are also getting more into Aussie sports.  Aussie Rules Football is pretty unique to Australia (hence the name) but cricket and rugby are popular the world over.  Last night we went to the Bledisoe Cup, a rugby union match that is played between the Australian Wallabies and the New Zealand All-Blacks.  This was a HUGE match, not only because of the intense rivalry between the two countries, but because it is the last match they play before the world cup.   (The World Cup of Rugby starts next month in New Zealand.  There was another match on the Gold Coast last night between a second team of Australians and the Canadians...Canada lost 38-14.)

The rugby match was really exciting!  This was our first time in Suncorp Stadium (badly flooded in January) and it is a great venue for a game like this.  It was only 10 minutes to walk there from our house.  The crowd was lively and lubricated, but still well behaved.  The big monitors at either end of the stadium continually flashed signs reminding us to report anti-social behaviour, but we just did not see any.  All the fans were having fun and cheering madly.

Suncorp Stadium

This was a really nice way to spend a warm winter evening.  We left the house wearing jumpers, jackets and hats, figured out that we would die of heat exhaustion on the way if we tried to walk to the Stadium dressed that warmly.  We did a quick retreat to layer-down, and made a mental note to remember that a winter evening in the tropics is still pretty warm.

Haka Dance

The heavily favoured All Blacks started the game by doing a haka dance, which is traditional Maori dance. It is a fairly intimidating thing to see, with an entire team of gigantic men yelling and moving in unison. It may have got under our skin, but the heroic Wallabies shrugged it off. The final score was 25 -20 for the Wallabies!